


before & after

by pugglemuggle



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Canon compliant... mostly, Delphine lives, Domestic, F/F, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Misses Clause Challenge, Missing Scenes, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Unbury Your Gays, minor pre-canon James/Lorraine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugglemuggle/pseuds/pugglemuggle
Summary: Delphine lives.(Or: the prelude, the aftermath, and some missing scenes in between.)





	before & after

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elanorofcastile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanorofcastile/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this gift! Ever since I saw this movie during a free pre-screening (whooo lucky me!!) I've been wanting to write something like this, and I'm so thrilled that you gave me the opportunity! Happy Yuletide!
> 
> The format of this fic was inspired by [this awesome Stormpilot fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12556124) by [Lizzen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/pseuds/Lizzen). I thought it would work really well for this canon, so I decided to give it a shot!

**5 Days After**

The woman sitting at the Manhattan bar has her back to Lorraine, dark hair curling over the back of her deep blue blouse as her fingers reach for the cherry in her cocktail. There’s a man standing at her side. Harmless, a civilian, but he’s leaning over her and boxing her in with an arm against the bar like he’s trying to keep her there. He can’t, of course. He doesn’t stand a chance of stopping her if she chooses to leave. This bar has a front exit, a back exit, two exits in the kitchen, and roof access. That’s why they picked it, after all. The perfect rendezvous.

Lorraine approaches the bar. The dim lights above the counter should cast the woman in shadow, but she seems to radiate a soft light of her own. When she tilts her chin to the right, the rich glow of her skin and the sweep of her long dark lashes draw the eyes of the room like disciples to a goddess. Not even the thin, red-purple line circling her neck can break her spell. No wonder she has company already.

Not for much longer though, Lorraine thinks. Not if she has anything to say about it.

As Lorraine reaches the woman’s other side, something in the air must shift, because the woman _knows_. She dismisses the man at her side and turns as easily as if Lorraine had tapped her shoulder. In a moment, their eyes lock, and Lorraine’s breath catches in her throat.

“Hello, stranger,” the woman says. She smiles, bright and breathtaking. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You looked like you needed saving,” Lorraine says. Then, “It’s good to see you.”

“I know,” replies Delphine. And she does. Lorraine has hidden secrets from the world’s greatest liars and criminals, but somehow she was never able to hide a thing from Delphine. _I can tell the truth,_ she’d said. _You look different. Your eyes change._

“Ready to go?” Lorraine asks.

Delphine’s eyes soften, and her lips curve in a smile so gentle that it breaks Lorraine’s heart.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

**6 Days After**

The ice makes her skin alternate between burning and numbness, but the nimble hands working her shoulders are warm.

“It gives you color, I suppose,” Delphine says, her fingers ghosting over the bruises on her shoulder blades. Lorraine is sitting up in the bathtub of the hotel room, Delphine cross-legged on the floor behind her. Lorraine has not looked at the mirrors lining the hotel bathroom, does not want to see the lives she took reflected in the marks on her skin. But Delphine has no such reluctance. Delphine touches every bruise—tender, loving, turning them from black-purple to blue-pink. When Delphine leans forward to kiss her darkened collarbone, her breasts pressing gently into Lorraine’s back, Lorraine tilts her head and lets her.

The blood red ring around Delphine’s neck has dimmed, no longer as bright and ugly as it once was. They will both carry scars. Their bodies are marked, irrevocably changed by a lawless city of ruthless, evil men. These wounds will follow them, but not define them.  

The only thing Lorraine will let define her now is whose fingertips she lets trace over the scars.

 

**15 Days Before**

“We’ll need to be professional at the debrief.”

Lorraine frowns, fingers pausing as she buttons her gray blouse. “Have I ever been anything short of professional?”

“No, you are always professional. That’s exactly why I worry,” John says. He buckles his pants, then sits next to her on the bed. “In the three years we’ve worked together I’ve never once found someone who could rattle you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Gascoigne,” she says. “No one can rattle me, and you won’t be the first.”

He looks her in the eye for a long moment, like he’s searching for something. “I hope not,” he says. “I really hope not. It could get you killed one day.”

 

**12 Hours Before**

Lorraine wakes to Delphine’s bright eyes watching her from the other side of the bed. It’s dawn, and the early morning sunlight is just slipping through the open bedroom door. Most of the room’s light still comes from the pink and blue lamps set in the wall. The colored lights make Delphine look almost ethereal, like something from a dream.

“What are you thinking about?” Delphine whispers. Her eyes are wide and earnest, and Lorraine wonders how someone so sincere has survived this long in a city as cruel as Berlin.

“You trust the wrong people, Delphine,” Lorraine says, quiet.

Delphine leans in and buries her face in the crook of her neck, placing a kiss there. “If I trusted the right people, we would be dead,” she murmurs. “Besides—you are not the wrong person to trust. I know it.”

Lorraine huffs a humorless laugh. “You’re wrong,” she says, but there’s something about the taste of Delphine’s lips that makes her want to take back her words, something about those eyes that makes Lorraine desperate to prove Delphine right, and that—that will get her killed.

She can’t bring herself to care.

 

**10 Seconds After**

Lorraine bursts through the door to Delphine’s apartment and sees the unthinkable.

Delphine is on the floor. She is unconscious, not breathing, her eyes are open, her arm extended towards the apartment’s back door like an arrow in the assailant’s direction. Sounds. Footsteps, stumbling, unsteady. David. He’s still here. Lorraine has a choice.

She does not decide. She acts.

Lorraine drops to the floor and checks Delphine’s pulse. Her heartbeat is weak but _there_ , a reminder of her resilience. Lorraine should take this as an indication that David is close, rushed, and possibly injured. He couldn’t have been strangling her for more than thirty seconds, Lorraine guesses. Long enough to make a struggling victim unconscious, but not long enough to kill them. Lorraine should leave, should track David down, but—

_—get you killed—_

Lorraine slides her hand under Delphine’s neck, tilts her head back, and angles her jaw forward to clear her airway. _Please_. She blows air into Delphine’s lungs once, twice, and just before the third Delphine gasps and begins to breathe.

“Delphine,” Lorraine urges, taking in a big, shuddering gulp of air like her breath was stolen, too. “Delphine. Delphine.”

Delphine blinks up at her. She stares for a long, terrifying moment, and then has the audacity to smile.

“You saved me,” Delphine murmurs. Her voice is low and raspy. Lorraine has not cried in fourteen years, but she thinks she might now.

She wants to tell Delphine she didn’t save her. She wants to tell Delphine how strong she is for keeping her heart, for playing the game in her own way. She wants to tell Delphine about herself. She wants to tell Delphine how she was before, how lost she was before, how little Lorraine felt _before_. Instead she leans down and places a soft, trembling kiss against Delphine’s lips and whispers, “I didn’t save you. You saved me.”

 

**3 Years After**

When she wakes, her heart is beating wildly and cold sweat is running down her back. She breathes, in, out, in, out, runs her hands over her eyes and bites her lip hard. A dream.

She’s not Lorraine anymore. She’s Laura. The subtle, sleepy sounds of San Francisco stirring below their apartment slip up through the floorboards—so different from the harsh chaos that was Berlin. Her life is a quiet one. She is safe.

Laura looks at the woman asleep in the bed beside her, her dark hair creating swirling patterns on the pillow. Her name is Emilie now, not Delphine, and she looks as peaceful as Laura wishes she felt. The way her lashes fan out over her cheeks makes Laura want to kiss her.

And so she does.

“Good morning,” Laura murmurs.

Emilie sighs, and her eyes flutter open. “Mmh. Good morning. Did you have another dream?”

“Yes. But don’t worry—I’m fine.”

Emilie smooths her hand over Laura’s back, then sits up and presses herself close. “Come back to sleep with me,” she whispers. “Let me hold you.”

Laura is never able to refuse Emilie. Her words call her back down to the powder-blue sheets and Emilie’s plush pink lips and there, she will stay. She never has to leave. She never has to be more than the woman she is now between these sheets.

“ _Je t’aime,_ ” Emilie whispers, her arms around Laura’s belly and her lips pressing kisses into the skin behind Laura’s ear. “ _Mon amour._ ”

As she settles into Emilie’s arms, she knows she is loved. Perhaps her story need not be a tragic one. Perhaps she is allowed to be happy, after all.  


End file.
